garyb@gallium.uucp (Gary Blumenstein) (10/29/90)
Folk's, We're in the process of shopping for an upper-end UNIX server
to improve the performance of our existing networks and provide the
necessary resources for expansion. As a part of our research,
I would like to solicit your opinions regarding Sun's 4/490 high
end server.
If you are involved as an Administrator or Manager of your organization's
network operations, It would be most helpful if you could provide some
general information regarding your experiences with the 4/490.
We thought the questions below would serve as a good starting point
as it will make summarizing the answers easy. However, please feel free
to answer any way you choose. A short description of your experiences or
just some suggestions would be great. YOUR ANSWERS WILL BE HELD IN
THE STRICTEST CONFIDENCE!
As a return favor, I will summarize the results for the net, once again
emphasizing that your name and organization will not appear. Of
course, if you don't wish to be included in the summary, just indicate
so.
Thanks and plese e-mail your results to: garyb@gallium
...uunet!philabs!crpmks!gallium!garyb
===============================================================
Sun 4/490 Questionnaire
===============================================================
General Questions:
------------------
o How satisfied are you with the performace of the 4/490?
o How long did it take to install and get the system running?
o Did you have any reservations about going with Sun's IPC disk
technology? If so why?
o What was your main bottleneck in performance prior to installing
the 4/490. (e.g. NFS traffic, CPU,...)
o What was your most significant reason for selecting a 4/490 instead
of let's say, an Auspex?
Service, Support, and Reliability:
----------------------------------
o How would you rate Sun Hotline Support for the 4/490?
o How is the Sun Hotline turnaround time?
o Have you experienced any down time? If so, for what reasons?
( How long did it take to recover?)
o Have you had any disk crashes? Were you able to recover?
Your Environment:
-----------------
o When was your 4/490 server installed?
o What system/server did you previously use?
o What types of software applications are you running?
o How many clients do you have on the 4/490? What kind?
o How many terminals, PC's and Mac's do you have on the network?
o How many users?
o How many people are in your systems department?
o What level of unix experience do they have?
Once again, many thanks for taking the time to respond.
--
Gary M. Blumenstein, UNIX System Administrator
______________________________________________________________________________
___ United Parcel Service, Research & Development
|=X=| 51-53 Kenosia Ave. Danbury, CT 06810-7326
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------katz@elements.rpal.com (Morry Katz) (10/31/90)
In article <350@gallium.UUCP> garyb@gallium.uucp (Gary Blumenstein) writes: > =============================================================== > Sun 4/490 Questionnaire > =============================================================== > General Questions: > ------------------ > o How satisfied are you with the performace of the 4/490? Very. > o How long did it take to install and get the system running? 1 day for system software. 1 month to install and compile all the 3rd party sources, get mail and news working, etc. > o Did you have any reservations about going with Sun's IPC disk > technology? If so why? No. > o What was your main bottleneck in performance prior to installing > the 4/490. (e.g. NFS traffic, CPU,...) We used Symbolicies. They were deadly slow on all accounts. > o What was your most significant reason for selecting a 4/490 instead > of let's say, an Auspex? We wanted our machines and maintenance from a single manufacturer. > > Service, Support, and Reliability: > ---------------------------------- > o How would you rate Sun Hotline Support for the 4/490? Sun support has some real problems. Personal answerline is better than basic support but response to bugs is still slow. Sun is probably no worse than the there vendors; software support is just abismal throughout the industry. > o How is the Sun Hotline turnaround time? I have used PAL so long I dont know about basic service. PAL time for a call back takes only a couple of hours. Solutions to problems take between weeks and years. (I have been less than satisfied.) > o Have you experienced any down time? If so, for what reasons? > ( How long did it take to recover?) A bad CPU board (actually a bad Cache chip) caused the machine to crash about once a day. It took 36 hours to get us a new board. We also had a problem that we needed to upgrade several of our boards when we upgraded the OS. This was not documented so we experienced 2 days of downtime waiting for all of the boards to be replaced. > o Have you had any disk crashes? Were you able to recover? No. > > Your Environment: > ----------------- > o When was your 4/490 server installed? 11-89 > o What system/server did you previously use? Symbolics > o What types of software applications are you running? Emacs, TeX, X11R4, Cnews, NNTP, kermit, Allegro and Franz Common Lisp, Fortran compiler, CAP, KIP, Scheme > o How many clients do you have on the 4/490? What kind? 7 - 4/60's > o How many terminals, PC's and Mac's do you have on the network? 20 > o How many users? 25 > o How many people are in your systems department? 1/4 - This is really insufficient so many, many things remain undone. At least a 1/2 person is needed. > o What level of unix experience do they have? Extensive > -- ------------------------------------------------------ Morry Katz Rockwell Science Center administrator@rpal.com (machine administration issues) katz@rpal.com (other) ------------------------------------------------------